April 5, 2011

Lately I’ve been following the practices of Shivani Verma, a philosopher and speaker who offers new-age spirituality lessons based on the principles of “Bhrahma Kumaris”. Her lessons are easy to follow and make quite a bit of sense. I try to catch her early morning show on Zee TV called “Awakening with Brahma Kumaris”. Today I got quite a bit out of her talk about our purpose in life and I have to share!

Have you ever found yourself asking, “What is my purpose”. Typical answers could be, “I’m a mother so my purpose is to raise my children properly” or “I’m a student so my purpose is to get a degree and be successful in any given field” or “I don’t know, I’m searching for it”, etc. Shivani talks about the purpose of life at a deeper level; we often look outside to find purpose but our true purpose is to be happy inside. This doesn’t mean neglect our other duties or our other goals. She talks about making being happy as our main purpose in life but that we should continue to play our roles in life and fulfill our duties. Experience these duties fully. By living life with the purpose of being full of happiness, you’ll be happier in each of your roles and you’ll make other around you happy.

Don’t look for long-lasting happiness outside; our happiness is not dependent on external ever-changing situations. Find the joy within. She says that our inner focus changes but nothing outside changes. Through Jainism I’ve learned that all of these bits of joy we experience in life are very short-lived. That doesn’t mean I won’t listen to my favorite song tomorrow morning to get pumped for the day but at the same time I will be conscious that this is temporary happiness and that true happiness comes from within. I think (and she suggested) that mediation can assist with experiencing happiness within. Who knows-maybe ill find that song even more enjoyable when I start making being happy my main purpose in life.

If interested in more, you can catch her on Zee TV around 7-7:30am. You can also check out the official site for Brahma Kumaris. She’s on YouTube but it’s in Hindi and not all the videos have subtitles. You can also check out her blog @ http://sistershivani.blogspot.com/.